The Poorlaw and Workhouses in Victorian Literature (original) (raw)

Criticisms of the Poor Law in Material on the Victorian Web

• “The New Starvation Law Examined” (Broadside poem)
• Frances Trollope, Jessie Phillips: A Tale of the New Poor Law (1843)
• Thomas Carlyle, "Poor-law Prisons," Past and Present (1846)
• Charles Dickens, “A Walk in the Workhouse” (1850)
• Elizabeth Sewell satirizing advocates of the Poor Laws (1854)
• "'The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge” (Dickens’s A Christmas Carol)
• Criticism of the Poor Law a main theme of Oliver Twist
• “Behold the effects of its infamous Poor-Laws” — G. W. M. Reynolds, England’s most popular novelist
• Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and the poor laws
• Francis Power Cobbe and workhouse visitation
• George Eliot , "A Village Workhouse" (1857)
• John Ruskin’s “Work” on the Effects of the Poor Laws
• George R. Sims, "Christmas Day in the Workhouse" (1903)

Last modified 27 April 2019